To hear it from the conservative side of my family … “Is there no limit on how many people he can commute?” and “There’s no way he’s able to sign all those letters, he can barely keep his eyes open.”
I don’t know how accurate it is, but they were saying he has already freed 1,500 people. I asked how many of those people were convicted of non-violent drug related charges, and they did not know nor did they seem to care. I thought that was interesting given some of my relatives’, shall we call it, histories.
For the lazy:
the president did not commute the sentences of three people whose crimes included mass shootings or acts of terrorism: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon bombing in 2013; Dylann Roof, a White nationalist who massacred nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
I don’t agree with the death penalty on principle, so I understand why he didn’t commute those sentences, but I still think he should have.
If he commuted those sentences, though, the narrative would focus on how Biden was being soft on mass murderers, and not on the death penalty itself.
Who cares? He doesn’t need to appear “tough on crime” for reelection.
Idiots will condemn the entire American democratic party because of it though. Either way.
Apparently Americans can’t remember what happened four years ago, so this wouldn’t even register by the next election cycle.
They remember what happened, they elected Biden and their material conditions worsened so they re-elected the guy that could at least be bullied into cutting them a rebate check.
I’m not saying I agree with their assessment but I can understand it.
they elected Biden and right-wing news told them for four years their material conditions worsened and ignored that 1) cleaning up Trump’s COVID mess left America in a much better spot than every other developed country and 2) how they felt about the economy and the facts about the economy didn’t match.
I don’t really disagree with what you’re saying but it’s important not to dismiss peoples experience at the grocery store and when it’s time to pay their bills as “how they feel about the economy.”
The NASDAQ doesn’t put gas in a car or milk in a fridge, that shit is still expensive.
Almost as if it’s an ideological thing, and not about winning votes. Imagine that.
If he’s alive, the bastard is probably going to run again in 28.
Even though he abandoned his effort in '24? That seems highly unlikely. It seems even less likely that he’d win in an open primary at this point.
he openly said he would only seek a single term when he went for the first one
I don’t remember that, but if that was the plan, why did he start campaigning for a second one then? Was the pan all along bow out so close to election day that we couldn’t have a primary election and just put Harris as the only D option?
If I recall, he decided to run for reelection because the alternative was Trump.
Giving up the incumbent advantage would have been extremely detrimental to the effort to prevent a second Trump Administration. I believe there are articles from that time about him making this decision.
Hindsight is 20/20 so I’m not interested in hearing about how it was a bad calculation or whatever. The rate of Biden’s mental decay after that only increased.
No sane political operator would have held a Democratic primary given the circumstances at the time.
Not OP, but Occam’s Razor applies here. Ever had a job you only planned to be at for a short time, but got comfortable?
I mean, no? Lol. I was mostly being sardonic about how the entrenched centrist gerontocracy will never willingly give up power, and how after 2 consecutive cycles without a real, open, and full primary the likelihood of the Democrats not pulling some shady shit to coronate their chosen entrenched centrist gerontocrat is… A worrisome concern.
You don’t think 2020 was a real, open, and full primary? You may not like the results, but everyone had their chance. It was also far from given that Biden would win. He ended up winning because he was widely viewed as the most electable option to beat Trump.
During the primaries is when covid hit, chaos ensued, the primaries were cut short, right in the tails of (all perfectly legal) fuckery by the centrists and Warren. I’m not saying that’s some conspiracy shit about covid or that it was planned or anything, just that it was crazy, chaotic, no one knew what was going on. There was a plague on. What I am saying is that with 8 years of no real, full primaries I do not think the entrenched powers that be within the Democratic party are going to relinquish the amount of control they gained by cutting primaries short. The Democrats have always had a problem with primaries, and letting the people actually pick the candidates. That’s why they love their superdelegates so much, it gives the party the power to overrule the people. Limiting the primaries further (again, after giving people 8 years to get used to it, even if it wasn’t planned or intentional) is just an extension of party control over the candidate. Primaries are not elections, there’s no requirement that the private corporations that call themselves political parties give us a choice as to the candidate they run, and I see no reason why they would not limit that as much as possible to protect their interests. There is a balancing act within the party: how much control and power can we hold while not pissing off the base so much that they abandon us?
With the tactic of ‘vote for us or watch your loved ones die or end up in camps’ combined with taking advantage of situations like the aftermath of a chaotic and unavoidably cut short primary season, the answer is “quite a lot”
Considering Biden’s actions with Israel, he is soft on mass murderers
Morally it’s the right thing to do in my eyes. It’s also surprising how the pro life and pro death penalty people are the same people usually.
Pro life only lasts until you’re born. After that it’s pro death.
There’s a very bad joke o remember hearing a long time ago. It’s something along the lines of: “I’m in favor of killing babies, but I don’t like to give women a choice.” Most pro-life people actually are that, except they extended “baby” way before birth in a stupid way. They’re fine with killing actually post-birth babies though.
It’s only surprising if you know nothing about the group beyond the inaccurate name they use to identify themselves
I actually have a friend who’s quite… strange. He’s pretty right wing, very into certain conspiracy theories, pro musk, etc, yet one of the nicest guys you’ll meet and certainly the guy you’d be calling to bail you out of jail in a pinch. Anyways, he actually opposes the death penalty exactly because he’s pro life. Said he couldn’t reconcile both of those stances.
That’s good! That means he’s at least a reasonable person. He can think for himself and can consider if ideas are idiologically consistent. I hope that eventually translates to him having empathy with people and then noticing how conservative politics fucks people over just for the sake of having an enemy though.
He didn’t commute the one Boston bomber, Dylan Roof, and the Tree of Life shooter. Which is good. I don’t agree with the death penalty but you can’t really pardon people like that.
It’s not a pardon. They would still be subject to the harshest punishment possible in civilized countries, and would never again be a threat to anyone.
And the confusion here is exactly why it would have been a PR nightmare. The average American is really stupid.
Most civilized countries have abolished the death penalty
Thank you for clarifying my point.
Well I more just mean HE couldn’t because probably that would be unpopular with the groups who were targeted by them.
I think you can, especially when the sentence is still life in prison. Remember that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt, so they would not ever be paroled.
These weren’t pardons, but commuted sentences. I don’t know what the stipulations surrounding that are
accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt
This was true, but that no longer applies. (at least at the federal level; I have no clue how state courts have ruled on this.)
Well I have to admit I agree with the court there. A pardon should not be an admission of guilt. So even though that changes what I said, I have to concur with them. Thank you for letting me know.
It’s also surprising how the pro life and pro death penalty people are the same people usually.
It shouldn’t be. There is actually no contradiction or mutual exclusivity between the two; it only seems that way because of how the former viewpoint is labeled (it was definitely a PR move to call it “pro life” instead of “anti abortion”, which is a more accurate description of the stance).
Pro lifers believe the unborn are morally equivalent to the newly born, and therefore believe killing/destroying (depending on your perspective) the unborn is equivalent to murder (defined as ‘undeserved killing/execution’), since the unborn is innocent by definition. And because they, like everyone else, believe murder is immoral, they also believe abortion is immoral.
This does not conflict at all with being in favor of the death penalty for someone guilty of a major crime against humanity, because such a person is not innocent, unlike the unborn child.
In fact, on another axis, these two stances are actually in perfect alignment (except in cases of rape, etc. which I believe is why many pro lifers do in fact make exceptions for those cases, being okay with abortion then), in that they both come from the mindset of ‘you must take responsibility and be held accountable for your actions’.
Hope that clears things up a bit.
Should preemptively pardon luigi
Biden is a corporatist, he is literally not on our side with that one.
Lmfao “with that one”
I know, I Said should not would. Who knows the person puppeting him weekend at Bernie’s style might?
Look I need something to hope for lmao.
I’m sure Trump had big plans for pay-per-view executions on Pravda Social. Probably with torture.
Of course, Trump will have millions of death row sentences to hand down once they find out how expensive those concentration camps are and how long it will take to get countries to be willing to take all of those millions of people back and decides to come up with a Final Solution.
We already have a well-developed forced labor prison infrastructure, and there will be plenty of farm work to do. The camps will pay for themselves, and enrich big corporations in the process.
Yep, lots of people are going to make lots of money off of this. Just not the brown people working in the fields. I guess this is what the GOP means when talk about the good old days.
Isn’t the expense of the camps part of the intent?
I’m pretty sure the intent is genocidal fascism.
Why not both?
They won’t do shit, taking away the strawberry pickers and pool boys isn’t on the agenda. They’ll spend money on border patrols, ship off some brown people that are easy to catch, trumpet about it in the news and go back to making money off their backs. It was all a dog and pony show.
Can I borrow your crystal ball to look up next week’s lotto numbers?
Also, I would really love to listen in on your secret microphones at Mar-a-Lago.
(When someone tells you they’re going to commit genocide, maybe the best thing to do is err on the side of caution and believe it.)
Check back in a year from now and tell me how I’m wrong instead of being a prick right now.
Or we could all err on the side of caution, as I said, rather than just assume it won’t happen. I’m not sure why you think assuming it won’t happen and continuing on as if genocide in America isn’t possible when we’ve already done it multiple times is the best course of action.
I’ll just tell you right now, no need to wait.
You are a naive fool
And Super Brother of Mario?
Gotta have a sentence before a commutation or pardon, I believe.
No you don’t. Carter issued a [blanked pardon for all draft dodgers from the Vietnam war](https://www.justice.gov/pardon/proclamation-4483-granting-pardon-violations-selective-service-act). No prior charges or convictions needed.
Super Star theme starts playing
Nixon didn’t before his pardon, but I suspect it would be necessary for a commutation.
No, Biden just fucking sucks.
Don’t worry Trump has a plan for Dylan Roof and Robert Bowers that doesn’t involve them getting executed.
cabinet positions
We need to quit wasting time and resources on these type of shooters and bad people get them gone and let’s grow better as a civilization.
Those resources could be utilized in a more appropriate fashion such as wrongful conviction cases or anything to help better humanity in any way rather than 70k a year to keep each inmate and its not the monetary value its the goods and services value. Resource cost.
I guess I am pro death penalty.
That’s basically what Biden is doing here. In the US executing someone is magnitudes more expensive than life in prison. Depending on the state it can be anywhere from 2 to 10 times more expensive than life in prison.
And that’s before you factor in that something like half (or more) of the people who are executed are later found to be innocent of the crime.
This alone is reason enough imo
Agreed
We need to quit wasting time and resources on these type of shooters and bad people get them gone and let’s grow better as a civilization.
While I understand your position, I disagree. Instead of death, if we do our best to learn about these people and prevent further destruction we’ll all be better off (if that means life imprisonment, then so be it). I’m sure there are plenty of criminologists willing to curate that knowledge.
If we learn more about them, then we gain the tools to grow better as a civilisation as you put it.
If we had a perfectly equal system, I would be in favor of the death penalty but we don’t. That means we are executing a wildly disproportionate amount of poor black men. I can’t support such a system.
Finally
